330 Major F. Bailey's Forest Tour 



various colours, from the red of the youngest to the grey, 

 rough, moss-covered natural growth on the upper part of 

 the tree. Experts can tell the age of the cork by its 

 colour and general appearance. The outer surface of 

 the second and subsequent growths of cork, though smooth 

 and clean by comparison with that of the natural layer, is 

 hard and gritty, and has to be scraped off. This causes 

 a loss in thickness ; and a system has been devised by 

 M. Capgrand-Motte, under which the growing cork is pro- 

 tected by a covering — a sort of jacket, in fact. This method 

 was highly thought of at first, but it is now believed to be 

 the cause of a fungus growth which has appeared on a 

 large proportion of the trees so treated, and it has been 

 abandoned. 



The trees are nearly all coppice-shoots. Stems of less 

 than 16 inches in circumference are not worked. It is 

 said that a seedling tree will not here attain this size 

 in less than forty years, whereas a coppice-shoot will 

 do so in fifteen years. The collection of cork from the 

 Ibrest we visited has now been going on for about sixty 

 years, and it is believed that the trees can be worked up 

 to a great age. The yield per tree depends of course on 

 its size; but it has been calculated that a square foot of 

 matrix yields on an average 1^- lb. of cork every eight or 

 nine years. The price is very variable, rising sometimes 

 to 50s. per 100 lbs., but more ordinarily the rate is 25s., 

 the cost of collection being 3s. 6d. 



The financial difficulties in which most of the communes 

 are involved, lead to the result that, notwithstanding the 

 intervention of the Forest Department, their forests are 

 not, generally speaking, kept in such good order as those of 

 private proprietors. It is a common practice with them to 

 farm out the collection of cork on twelve-years' leases ; but 

 this, generally, or at any rate frequently, leads to the con- 

 tractors taking off all the cork of marketable thickness in the 

 last two seasons, and handing back the trees in a condition 

 in which they cannot yield much more for several years. 

 The system should be discontinued. 



The cork oak is a tree of light cover. Here it grows 

 mixed with the cluster pine ; but there can be no doubt 

 that the proportion of pine, which tree is of very small value 



